Even models struggle with body image.
Sailor Brinkley Cook, the 18-year-old daughter of supermodel Christie Brinkley and her former husband Peter Cook, opened up on Instagram about her struggle to love her body — and how she finally got there.
"I've had issues with my body image since before I can even remember," she wrote on a photo of herself, her mom, and her sister from Sports Illustrated's cover shoot.
"I grew up not loving how I looked and felt held back because of it," she continued. Like many people who struggle with body image, Brinkley Cook says she can't pin down exactly why she wasn't happy with her body. Sure, she went through the same awkward phases we all experience as teens just trying to survive puberty, but she always had the support and love of her family and friends.
"But for some reason I still looked in the mirror and always somehow found something to pick on. I went from being 'too fat' to 'too thin' to 'too muscular' and I never felt satisfied," she wrote. "My body and I have been through it all."
But recently, her thoughts have shifted.
"I have been liberated," she wrote. "I am healthy, I treat myself well, and for that I'm happy. I've looked in the mirror and been able to LOVE the things about my body that beauty norms deem 'undesirable.' I now have grown to know that my body is worthy of so many great things. I don't need to be a size 0 to believe in myself."
Now, she loves her body not only for how it looks, but also for all the amazing things it can do.
"My body carries me each and every day, it loves the people I love, it holds what makes me healthy and strong, it bends it shakes it runs and it CHANGES. That is okay and that is beautiful."
In the post, Brinkley Cook credits magazines like Sports Illustrated showing strong, diverse bodies for helping to change the way she sees her own body.
"As a growing young woman SI showed me all bodies are different and all bodies are worthy of celebrating," she wrote. That's a message we can stand behind.